Spring's End with the Lovers
Gemini // teaching my heart to expand
Today is a mild day today after a sweltering hot week in Ohio. It is very apparent that spring is over at last. Last week’s high was 96F and my garden looks like a tropical jungle. Fledgling birds are all over the yard making a racket and hunting for bugs. I hope you are enjoying an ice-cold drink while you rest in the heat of the day. This post is mainly about Gemini season, which just ended last week with the Summer Solstice. Thanks for sticking around for my less than consistent writing schedule and thanks, as always, for reading, xo.
We are only a few weeks into summer vacation and I am already touched out. How can such small humans bring so much energy to the world? They are just cosmic fountains of love and whinging and snuggles and snacks.
Late spring and early summer ring in the season of Muchness. Gemini swoops in with all things social and busy and communicative. The Sun shines in all its glory… sometimes making me squint and run for cover. The isolation of winter is finally over, replaced by crowds and parties and late nights and swimming and sunshine. So much to do! So much joy!
I had to make a return at TJMaxx this week and there was a sea of humanity. People shopping for summer clothes and all other manner of consumer goods crammed together in the Big Box Store. It was the worst kind of too-much. Why do we need candles that look like a piece of cake? The loungewear next to the patio furniture next to the frying pan makes my head spin. I felt like a buoy bouncing on the waves of a choppy sea. Despite the industrial A/C, I was sweating.
But in the vast crowd of shoppers I didn’t make conversation with a single person. Heads down, we scavenged through racks of discount merchandise like so many marbles in a capitalist pinball machine. I didn’t even talk to the cashier. She smiled and was friendly enough, but the long line of shoppers had her in efficiency mode.
I’ve had the Lovers card out for the last several weeks of Gemini season. This card has been my guide and touchstone through the last several years and has grown to represent much more than romantic love to me. This is a card of care, which to me is the opposite of isolation. It can represent the care between two people, or the care we turn towards ourself or inner child. This card reminds me that we are made for connection, and that we are making the world we share. It’s so easy to forget that we need each other when either a) overwhelmed by squirrelly kids who feel like clingy barnacles, or b) overwhelmed by the disconnect caused by tidal waves of technology and consumerism and breaking news.
This card connects me to my Vast Heart1 - that compassionate source I can tap into that reminds me it is safe to stay soft and connect with others. I love the word VAST. It is so spacious and endless and unconditional. It is like a drink of water in the desert. Or like floating on your back in an open body of water - arms outstretched, each molecule of water holding you up and simultaneously holding itself. What kind of Love do you need right now?
Being in a crowd can be stimulating, but not necessarily connecting. I can bounce into other humans all day, but if I don’t feel seen, or understood, or if I don’t have a warm hug or a held hand, I’ll just end up feeling like I’m drowning. Coexistence is like rainfall. Connection is integrating into the Ocean.
I was noticing the other day how much my 8 year old appreciates physical touch. As we waited for an appointment she vacillated between stroking my arm, leaning on my shoulder, sitting on my lap, playing with my hair. All sweaty legs and tender hands and soft cheeks. Connection is pure instinct for her. My tween and teen are both snuggly in their own way but they have started slowly needing my touch less and less. But when they are most dysregulated or stressed I’ve been trying to lead with gentle touch instead of words. Most of the time it helps immediately, like an anchor bringing them back to earth when their minds are tail-spinning. How much of this touch instinct have I lost in my own journey to adulthood? How can I tap into it again?
This last month I experienced The Lovers in a few different but beautiful ways. A few moments of feeling like my drop coalesced into the vast, beautiful connection of humanity. I walked out of the pinball machine and dove into the Ocean.
First, I travelled to Columbus with some childhood friends and it was the most wonderful kind of Love. The kind when you connect with people who’ve known you forever and still choose to love you. Boundless care. We ate wonderful food, we shared air mattresses like the old days of after-school sleepovers, and played name-that-tune and sang along to 90’s era Christian rock music. Was it triggering? A little. Was it really fun? Absolutely. How does my brain instantly call back lyrics that I haven’t sung in 20 years?
I also took my teen to a Jacob Collier concert in Detroit which was nearly a religious experience2 for me. Seeing his joyful, exuberant self on stage brought tears immediately to my eyes and I basically didn’t stop crying all night. My teen is used to my emotional release that comes with music, and indulged me generously. We danced and sang along to every song. We held hands. One of his last songs has to be the most Lovers song ever:
Gon' take this raindrop
Down to the sea, oh
It will wash my
Fears away-ay-ay
And when I wake up
I'll see you smilin'
You are my ocean
Rain down on me. (Box of Stars, Pt 1)
It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the swell of summer energy. The busy-ness and muchness can become claustrophobic. I’ve been obsessed with the sky recently. I think it’s because it is so vast. There’s just so much room up there - no crowds or bumping into anything. My eyes are instinctively drawn to clouds and summer sunsets, and even last month, a brief glimpse of the aurora borealis. I want to capture them in my minds-eye and just hold all the big, glorious spaciousness in my heart. When summer feels like a lot, or my kids or our calendar overwhelm my system, I’m going to remember to slow down for deeper connection. I’m going to hold their hands and suggest that we go chase some clouds!
A LOVERS LIST // I’m going to try something new and share a few things that I find connect to the card of the season. It could be books (most likely), music, a show or podcast.
Jacob Collier’s whole Djesse Vol4 album, but especially the song I mentioned earlier (it’s a love + dance song) and Mi Corazon. <3
Sufjan Steven’s song Will Anybody Love Me has been on repeat while I’m painting. Something about this song just breaks my hard heart wide open.
I’m still on my divorce memoir kick and so far, I am really enjoying Splinters by Leslie Jamison. How does a divorce memoir connect to the Lovers card, you might ask? You have to deeply love and honor yourself to make the hard choice of ending a relationship. Sometimes the love and care of children requires a break in a romantic relationship. Sometimes two people need to care deeply for one another by changing the dynamics of their relationship. This is all Lovers work.
I recently started Becky Chamber's book To Be Taught If Fortunate and it seems to fit the vibe of her other science fiction which I find to be deeply loving towards humanity and the universe!
Finally, Maddie Zahm’s song about her inner child is just so moving. Lovers, indeed.
My teacher, Erin, wrote this beautiful missive and prayer a few months ago on the Vast Heart and I go back to it regularly when I’m feeling disconnected.
Your painting, Lindsey! I feel transported! and the cloud pictures that follow!! I've always been a sky person. I remember hiking with friends in my twenties--my best friend was a small plants person--she paid attention every flower, mushroom, edible herb. Another friend was a water person--always commenting on how light played on the river's current. But I was attuned to the sky--to the layers and shades of blue-grey, to the spectacular dimensions that open up as clouds shift and break apart. So I love your reflections on the vast, vast sky. Vastness is what I remember feeling when I wrote my first story when I was seven, and decided I wanted to be a writer--its always been in pursuit of that vastness.
It took me too long to come and read your piece but it was worth the wait! I hadn't named it but I'm also a sky / cloud person! Mostly while running near sunset (lol if only I were a morning person I could have both), or while driving and admiring the bouncy cumulous clouds... or rain pouring from a distance, or the storm shelf cloud.... gosh now you got me going! 😂 Anyway, I love the idea of Lovers as connection, expansively. Hang on to those precious moments that remind us! (also, thank you for the link! :) )